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An undefinable ache forms in my guts when I look too long at that darkness. There’s a wrongness to the shadowy dark. The closest I can define it is a sense of dread. It’s the dark of a partially open closet when I was a child where I know there was a monster waiting for me to stop looking. Or the shadows under the bed, keeping me from climbing out all night, no matter how bad I needed to use the bathroom. This dark seems to swirl and move almost like it's breathing.
I look over my shoulder as we come to what seems like the edge of the fae village, barely under the edge of the tree’s branches. The light it casts is dim and has a slight flicker, like a fluorescent bulb that is at the end of its life.
The raven’s cry echoes through my head, pulling my attention back to where the bird sits on a ramshackle building. It’s not a big building, probably not much more than a single room. Smoke rises from a bent pipe that serves as a chimney. The wood of the walls is dark with age and shows signs of rot. The door hangs crooked, and the windows are shuttered. I give the door a tentative knock. I’m afraid to find out what is inside but I don’t think I have any choice.
“Come in, Quinn.”
My heart hammers faster. The voice inviting me in sounds ancient. Scratchy as if it hasn’t spoken in a long time or perhaps it belongs to a person who smokes. A lot. Five packs a day for years.
I grab the rusty ring that serves as a door handle and pull but the door doesn’t move. I pull harder and it still doesn’t move. Finally, I plant my feet and pull as hard as I can. The door flies open. I stumble back, feeling like a fool, and the raven caws.
“Laugh it up,” I mutter, glaring at the bird.
The room beyond the open door is smoky. A pot belly stove has its door open, casting an orange glow that illuminates the space. I duck my head to enter and smell the most succulent, savory scents I think I’ve ever inhaled. It reminds me of Christmas dinners at Grandma’s, a full cornucopia of scents mixing to create a sensory feeling that I can only describe as love and home.
“Hello?”
I wave a hand in front of my face, stirring the smoke. A figure is bent over the stove, stirring something in a pot. When the person turns around, it’s a bowed, old woman with a craggy face that is icy blue. She has piercing, glistening black eyes that look like they’re all pupils and no other color.
“Well? Sit. Do you think I have forever to wait on you?”
She motions to a stool on one side of a table. The table is set for two. She grabs the bowl from the table and shuffles to the stove where she ladles something from the pot. It plops into the bowl like a stew.
The story that the bard told at the village fire about the lost shepherd comes to mine. Never eating food in fairy lands was the moral of the tale. Well, one of the morals. No matter how good it smells.
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m not actually hungry.”
“And she starts our conversation with a lie. A bold choice, eh Riki?”
I look around quickly to spot who Riki is but before I see anyone the raven caws. In the small space, his voice is even louder. It’s clear that Riki is the raven.
Oh, boy.
“Sorry,” I say, taking the seat.
“Hospitality,” the woman says, placing a steaming bowl of what looks like a stew in front of me. “It’s important. Manners. People of your time, you’ve lost all sense of them. Terrible.”
The raven caws its agreement with her assessment. I pick up a wooden spoon and stir.
“Are you Caill?”
“Sometimes I am,” she says, “though shortening a person’s name like that is rude. You are every bit as rude and obnoxious as I expected.”
“I’m not,” I protest.
“I’m not,” Caill mimics and the raven caws as if it's laughing along with her. “Let me refuse your hospitality, butcher your name, and the next thing she’ll ask is how to get home. Care to bet?”
“What else am I supposed to ask?”
“You don’t listen, do you Quinn? How many times has Dugald told you to ask the right questions? How many times have you not listened? Not looked?”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
“No, you don’t,” she says, taking the seat opposite with her own bowl of stew.
She hunches over the bowl as if protecting it from someone that might seek to snatch it. No matter how good it smells, my stomach is clenched too tight to accept any food. I continue stirring to try and hide the fact I’m not eating.
“He said I have a destiny.”
